Thursday, April 7, 2011

Double-Dipped Donations

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that I'm a huge supporter of apes and those who try to help conserve their habitat. Among the most diligent supporters of any apes is the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI). Sure, they focus on chimpanzees and not bigfoots, but remember that "ape" is just a biological term meaning any member of this particular superfamily with the fancy name of hominoidea. This superfamily includes gibbons ("lesser apes"), chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, humans, and sasquatches (all of which are considered "greater apes").

The JGI focuses on habitat conservation and education. Like sasquatches, the tropical apes depend on having enough land to live and forage on. Their greatest threat is the encroachment of humans ruining the places where they live. This is usually done by deforestation and pollution. The JGI endeavors to educate the local humans to live in manners that have less impact on the environment.

Regarding sasquatches, Dr. Goodall is on record saying that she is "sure that they exist." She later backs away from this bold statement by saying that, "maybe they don't exist, but I want them to." You can relax, Dr. Goodall. They do exist.

I received an email from the Jane Goodall Institute today. The JGI runs largely on donations from private donors, and a group of donors is currently offering a matching grant for all funds received between now and April 16th. That means that if you donate $5 to the JGI, some other generous anonymous donor gives another $5 just because you did, which turns your donation into $10. Not bad... Double-dipping has never been so good for chimpanzees. (By the way, neither I nor North American Bigfoot receives anything from this. Hundreds of chimpanzees and gorillas stand to benefit, though.)

Read through the email below and consider giving something to this worthy cause. When sasquatches are recognized by the Powers-That-Be, conserving their habitat will be one of the most important gestures humans can make to our cousins in the woods. We will soon be joining Dr. Goodall in parallel efforts in our own North American way.

A generous group of Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) donors has offered to match any gift you make before April 16, 2011, dollar for dollar, up to $150,000. By donating today you could help us raise up to $300,000 to support for our conservation programs across Africa!

Nowhere is this support more critical than in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This troubled hotspot is home to the largest population of chimpanzees in the world, accounting for more than 50 percent of chimpanzees left in the wild. JGI is implementing innovative education and conservation programs in this area to save as many chimpanzees as possible.

Dr. Lilian Pintea, the Jane Goodall Institute’s vice president of Conservation Science, recently led a Conservation Action Plan workshop in the DRC. The workshop was the first in a series of meetings with local community members and representatives from the provincial and national government, police force, mining ministry, DRC non-governmental organization community, and other key stakeholders. The goal: to identify strategies and actions to reduce the threats to great apes and their habitat in a critical landscape of the eastern DRC.

The Conservation Action Plan will target more than 66 million acres, which contain approximately 15,000 chimpanzees and somewhere between 3,000-5,000 gorillas.

This is an exciting step in our work to save the largest population of chimpanzees remaining in the wild. Please help us save as many chimpanzees and gorillas in the DRC as possible: Donate to the JGI 2011 Matching Gift Fund.